


Find what you love and let it kill you

by ShariDeschain



Category: Animal Kingdom (TV)
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Grief/Mourning, Half-Sibling Incest, M/M, spoilers 1x09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 01:42:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8125611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShariDeschain/pseuds/ShariDeschain
Summary: He was never one for tenderness.





	

He was never one for tenderness. Or maybe he was once, when he still had Julia, but that's hard to tell. He has spent way too many years trying to forget about her, to pretend that she never existed so that her absence would stop hurting _So. Fucking. Much._ and now memories are mixed up with dreams and wishes, with regrets and guilt. 

He knows he'd loved her once. But he doesn't know if he had ever told her so, if he'd ever hugged her and kissed her lips and her forehead, and held her in his arms just to let her know that he loved her so much that it hurt.

Probably not.

But it doesn't matter now, because for once Julia doesn't have anything to do with this. It's not Julia they're fucking now, not this time. 

This time's all about Catherine, and Pope doesn't know if it's better or worse, because they're fucking another dead woman but Baz thinks that she's dead the way Julia used to be dead – alive but out of reach, out of sight – while Pope knows she's dead, _really dead_ , the way Julia's really dead now. Dead, the both of them. 

And he killed them. Her.

( _Catherine. Julia. Catherine._ ) 

Since that night it's like a fucking roulette in his head, but with only two names on it. And the wheel spins and spins and spins and never really stops. And sometimes the line between the things he knows and the things he doesn't know blurs, and that's when he makes the biggest mistakes. Like the one he's doing now.

His hand tightens around Baz's cock and his brother grunts, and moans and begs, as Pope pushes himself harder and harder into his body, willing to hurt him in order to save him, because that's what he does for his family: he hurts whatever threatens them so they can survive. 

Just like Smurf's taught him.

( _Catherine. Julia. Catherine._ )

They've done this only once before. After Julia. It was the only way they could work together again, the only way to keep what was left of their family from breaking into a hundreds pieces. The only way for them to come to terms with their sister's exile and their mother's anger. It was grief, and it was revenge, and it was a mistake then and it's a mistake now.

He waits for his brother to come into his hand, waits to feel Baz's body collapse under his, shoulders finally relaxed, fingers lazily sprawled on the pillow instead of fists full of blankets. He moves to see his brother's face and he watches him breath slowly, eyes half-closed, drifting on the verge of sleep.

He could say _I'm sorry_ and _I love you_ and _I was protecting you_ but he was never one for tenderness, so he just gives one last hard push that makes his brother yelp softly under his breath, and then slips out of him, his own cock still throbbing for a release that will never come, as Pope knows he doesn't deserve it, even if he loved her - _Catherine. Julia. Smurf._ \- more than Baz ever did.

**Author's Note:**

> \- Written for the Notte Bianca #25 challenge @ maridichallenge


End file.
